Monday, July 3, 2017

News Round Up [July 3, 2017]

Southeast’s summer Dungeness crab season shortened by three weeks

KTOO by Nora Saks, KFSK

The summer season for the commercial Dungeness crab fishery in Southeast Alaska will be three weeks shorter than usual, closing on July 25.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game made the announcement on June 29, after tallying the harvest from the first seven days of the crab season. The catch from that first week came in at 605,000 pounds.

Joe Stratman is the state lead crab biologist for the Southeast region.

“I would say it’s unprecedented. It’s only the second time we’ve come under threshold and it’s the largest reduction we’ve made to the fishing time to the summer season,” said Stratman.

The summer crab season was shortened once before, in 2013, but only by one week, not three.

He says that one factor for the low catch could be that the male Dungeness crab molt, or growing a new shell, is happening later than usual. Molting typically occurs anytime between February and early July, but varies year to year and geographically. [Read the rest]

Or...and hear me out on this...the Sea Otters are devastating the crab fishery...why is that NEVER talked about as a legitimate answer?

11-year-old Alaska boy shoots bear charging fishing party

KTOO by Associated Press

HOONAH, Alaska (AP) — Alaska State Troopers say quick action from an 11-year-old boy saved a fishing party from a charging brown bear.

The Juneau Empire reports Elliot Clark was walking through the woods near Game Creek last week with his three family members and three dogs when the bear came out and charged them.

Elliot’s father says the bear ran through two of the men, leaving Elliot and his cousin left in its path. Elliott raised his pump action shotgun and shot the bear with birdshot.

His father says the first shot did nothing, but two more downed the bear and finishing shots by the boy and his uncle killed it.

Elliot’s father says not getting around to putting a sling on his son’s gun might have saved their lives, as he was able to quickly ready himself. [Source]

Freedom of Speech Comes to an End in Germany

The most anti-democratic law perhaps ever to pass any Western Government just pass in the German Bundestag last week. Even the opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD) votes to suppress free speech and it is all geared to end criticism of government. This new law obligates the operators of social networks to block off anything that they themselves view “might be” criminal within 24 hours of receipt of the complaint. Other illegal content must be “deleted” or “blocked” within seven days.

The problem is rather simple. It boils down to there is no judicial determination as to what might be criminal and there is nothing specifically deemed to be criminal in the act. The word “criminal” is left totally undefined. Traditionally, the foundation of law in a free society is known as DUE PROCESS. This concept comes from the Bible. When Cain kills Abel, God knew what he had done. Nevertheless, he (1) summoned him, (2) asked him his side of the story, (3) judged him, and (4) sentenced him. It is presumed that God knew what took place, yet he still allowed Cain to explain and defend himself.

This is Due Process of Law, which is increasing under attack by all governments. The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a prime example of how the U.S. government is violating international law and the foundation of Due Process. The so-called terrorists they keep there are never provided the right in court to defend themselves. There is no evidence to put them on trial, do the government just keeps them locked-up with no Due Process of Law because they will not admit what they have done.

The Bundestag has just opened the door to the same violation of international law all because there is a major pension crisis in Germany that the politicians are attempting to hide prior to the election. Thus, exactly what is a “criminal” is left to the imagination. There is no right to be charged, no right defend oneself, you are summarily silenced. Private companies are now replacing courts of law. It is their decision what is now criminality. There is no right to be heard in a court of law anymore. They can now arbitrarily shut down anyone speaking content they “think” the government would not like. Now we have third parties acting as judges and juries all because the government does not like social media networks. These private companies must also decide on their view of what is “criminality” of the reported content within seven days. [Source]

The Paradox of the Elephant Brain

(With three times as many neurons, why doesn’t the elephant brain outperform ours?)

A 2014 study tested for self-control, a cognitive ability that relies on the prefrontal, associative part of the cerebral cortex, among a number of animal species—mostly primates, but also small rodents, doglike carnivores, the Asian elephant, and a variety of bird species. They found that the best correlate with correct performance in the test of self-control was absolute brain volume—except for the Asian elephant, which, despite being the largest-brained in the set, failed miserably at the task. A number of reasons come to mind, from “It did not care about the food or the task” to “It enjoyed annoying its caretakers by not performing.” (I like to think that the reason why it’s so hard to train monkeys to do things that are easily learned by humans is their dismay at the obviousness of the task: “C’mon, you want me to move to do just that? Gimme something more challenging to do! Gimme videogames!”)

The most interesting possibility to me, however, is that the African elephant might not have all the prefrontal neurons in the cerebral cortex that it takes to solve self-control decision tasks like the ones in the study. Once we had recognized that primate and rodent brains are made differently, with different numbers of neurons for their size, we had predicted that the African elephant brain might have as few as 3 billion neurons in the cerebral cortex and 21 billion neurons in the cerebellum, compared to our 16 billion and 69 billion, despite its much larger size—if it was built like a rodent brain.

On the other hand, if it was built like a primate brain, then the African elephant brain might have a whopping 62 billion neurons in the cerebral cortex and 159 billion neurons in the cerebellum. But elephants are neither rodents nor primates, of course; they belong to the superorder Afrotheria, as do a number of small animals like the elephant shrew and the golden mole we had already studied—and determined that their brains did, in fact, scale very much like rodent brains.

Lo and behold, the African elephant brain had more neurons than the human brain. And not just a few more: a full three times the number of neurons, 257 billion to our 86 billion neurons. But—and this was a huge, immense “but”—a whopping 98 percent of those neurons were located in the cerebellum, at the back of the brain. In every other mammal we had examined so far, the cerebellum concentrated most of the brain neurons, but never much more than 80 percent of them. The exceptional distribution of neurons within the elephant brain left a relatively meager 5.6 billion neurons in the whole cerebral cortex itself. Despite the size of the African elephant cerebral cortex, the 5.6 billion neurons in it paled in comparison to the average 16 billion neurons concentrated in the much smaller human cerebral cortex.

So here was our answer. No, the human brain does not have more neurons than the much larger elephant brain—but the human cerebral cortex has nearly three times as many neurons as the over twice as large cerebral cortex of the elephant. [Read the rest]

Muslim leader calls for a worldwide boycott of Starbucks because the coffee chain's pro-gay stance is 'not in line' with Islamic law

A prominent Muslim leader has called for a boycott of international coffee brand Starbucks because its support for gay marriage is 'not in line' with Islamic law.

Anwar Abbas, the leader of Muhammadiyah, a 30 million-strong group in Indonesia, said Starbucks' pro-gay stance threatened the 'religious and cultured' core of the Southeast Asian nation.

When a Starbucks shareholder complained in 2013 that the company had lost customers because of its support for gay marriage, Schultz said Starbucks embraced diversity and 'not every decision is an economic decision'. [Source]

Tower of human skulls in Mexico casts new light on Aztecs

A tower of human skulls unearthed beneath the heart of Mexico City has raised new questions about the culture of sacrifice in the Aztec Empire after crania of women and children surfaced among the hundreds embedded in the forbidding structure.

Archaeologists have found more than 650 skulls caked in lime and thousands of fragments in the cylindrical edifice near the site of the Templo Mayor, one of the main temples in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, which later became Mexico City.

The tower is believed to form part of the Huey Tzompantli, a massive array of skulls that struck fear into the Spanish conquistadores when they captured the city under Hernan Cortes, and mentioned the structure in contemporary accounts.

But the archaeological dig in the bowels of old Mexico City that began in 2015 suggests that picture was not complete.

"We were expecting just men, obviously young men, as warriors would be, and the thing about the women and children is that you'd think they wouldn't be going to war," said Rodrigo Bolanos, a biological anthropologist investigating the find.

"Something is happening that we have no record of, and this is really new, a first in the Huey Tzompantli," he added.
[Source]

No Record of?!? Perhaps if you revised and 'white washed' history (which is exactly what happened) you may 'have no record of', but any reader of history knows that the Aztecs of current day Mexico City where a vile civilization and sacrificed tens of thousands of women and children a year. Contrary to popular belief The Americas was not all sunshine and rainbows before the Europeans arrived. Which is why we celebrate Columbus Day--because Columbus represented Civilization and bringing some concept of Human Rights with him.

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